Sunday, 29 March 2015

Working with constellations in DOCdb

Constellations, of course, aren’t “real” objects, but they are a handy way of slicing up the night sky into more manageable chunks.

Having the sky sub-divided in this way immediately suggests an observing project: carefully examine each chunk of sky for anything and everything interesting. This raises the question: when is a particular part of the sky well-placed for observing?

With the recent addition of “constellation place holders” to the DOCdb database, this is now easy to answer, using the DOCdb List Plan option. Here’s the step-by-step guide.